Lynbrook Team Takes Home Rube Goldberg Trophy, After Lots Of Steps

A team of Lynbrook High School students finished first in the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest at the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Feb. 4. The students were also honored with the Spirit Award, which is given to the team that portrays the true ideals of Rube Goldberg, by not only creating a complicated machine that performs a simple task, but also showing creativity in displaying a humorous skit to describe the process.

Working under the guidance of coach Jon Zaccaro, the team completed this year’s challenge to design an extremely complicated way to put on a Band-Aid. The team used the board game "Operation" as their inspiration, creating a whimsical look at the inside of a surgical operating room.

Captain Spencer Kaminsky was joined at the competition by teammates Nicholas Christian, Jake Gus, Daniyal Jamal, Griffin Kearney, Zachary Lee, Raquel Moreno, Hannah Polokoff, Joshua Schaffer and Jack Sullivan. Teammates Harper Beattie, Charlee Gordon, John Long, Thomas Postiglione, Rebecca Shear and Kai Weinkauf contributed to the construction, planning and artwork for the project. The team has worked together for five years, always striving to improve their performance. They won the Legacy award last year, but until this year they were unable to place.

“Without question, Spencer motivated the group to finish their quest to be the best through dedication and teamwork over the years,” said Zaccaro. “I am honored that they chose me as their supervisor, but they deserve all the credit, since most of their work was done outside of school.”

The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest was created in the spirit of Rube Lucius Goldberg’s wacky illustrations that designed overly complex contraptions to accomplish simple tasks.

Photo: Lynbrook School District